Negotiations were short, and we came to an agreement within a few minutes. I only had two stipulations: everyone who used the focus-drug would be warned that taking too much at one time would result in death, and it would not be sold to children. Though Sendrick frowned when I stated my second stipulation, he agreed to both without hesitation. In terms of payment, we agreed that I would end up with 10% of all sales of my new drug.
Other than focus-drug, we had no name for it at the time. I would rather not call it “Adderall,” since such a name would remind me of what I was doing. I was essentially a drug dealer, handing out prescription medication like it was expensive candy. In my defense, I could have been a lot worse. The chemical formulae for meth, cocaine, and heroin were all still banging around inside of my mind.
If I had wanted to, I could have gotten this world addicted to some of the most terrible drugs ever conceived. Even with my relatively flexible morality, that was off the table. With Adderall, at least, the population would be pushed in a vaguely good direction. It would increase productivity, certainly.
I agreed to let Sendrick name the product; I just asked that my name not be mentioned in any way. I didn’t want an amphetamine-addicted wizard to come knocking on my door in a few years. Before I had even left his office, Sendrick came up with the name that would come to define the product of my new type of transmutation. He called it, “Miracle powder.”
Beyond that, I agreed to bring a kilo of the miracle powder to Sendrick once a week. That was probably the most I could produce with my current set up. Eventually, I would scale up my lab, and the only thing limiting production at that point would be my own mana reserve. At the time, I suspected that I would max out at five kilos per week.
As I said goodbye to Gertrude, my thoughts turned to my healing potential. I was pretty sure that the warning on the box would be enough to stop me from catching the baleful attention of Nyx.
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My knowledge of the specifics of healing potential loss was mostly limited to an old story I heard when I first played [Ferrum Online]. According to the story, many years ago, there were two priests. Each of them forged a sword and then sold their sword in the town square. One priest sold his sword to a mercenary, saying, “This sword will help you defend your family.”
The other priest sold his sword to a hunter, saying, “This sword can be used to carve up animals once you have killed them with your bow.”
Both the mercenary and the hunter then went on to use the swords to kill many people, some innocent and some guilty. Over the coming years, the first priest became despondent as his ability to use healing magic faded bit by bit. The second priest, however, was perfectly fine. Though the hunter went on to kill many innocent people with the sword, it resulted in no divine judgment to fall upon the second priest’s head.
The difference between the two priests was intent. The first priest intended for the mercenary to use the sword in a way that Nyx deemed unacceptable. Even though the actions of the two priests were indistinguishable, the intention of the second priest saved him.
I believed I was the second priest because I didn’t intend for the focus-drug to harm anyone. In addition, I was pretty sure that Nyx wouldn’t recognize “causing addiction” to be a “violent” action. Nyx took a strong stance against specifically physical harm, and not necessarily any action that makes someone’s life worse. Raising taxes won’t hurt your healing potential. It was theoretically possible that my healing potential could be hurt if someone were to overdose on the focus-drug, but I just had to rely on the warning on the box to prevent that from happening.
I walked through a relatively undeveloped part of town on my way back to Feldrast Manor. My breathing became heavy halfway through a long stretch of empty space, and I had to sit down on a bench to catch my breath. Thinking back to my meeting with Sendrick, I opened my notebook to the structural diagrams of the drugs I intended to synthesize in the future.
Imagining the many types of miracle powder that I could make and the many people I could help, I flipped through the pages of my journal with a smile. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I turned to see a hooded man dressed in long gray robes standing just a few centimeters behind me. He stared down at my journal with a piercing gaze.